fresco

If it isn't, it will be.

Think you're right that Italy imports a lot of wheat from Canada. What's really interesting, though, is they export it back as pasta, and, although I'm sure that there is good dried pasta made on these shores, I haven't found any that compares to the stuff a small grocer in my neighborhood brings in from his home village in the south of Italy. In fact, Italian pasta generally strikes me as superior to domestic stuff. And it's a safe bet it's almost all made with Canadian wheat.

I'm with you there.

If you go to the testicle festival, be sure to post about it.

Do the sheep wind up as food in Montana's "Pamplona"?

Have you attended? Sure sounds like an event that people would find fascinating to read about.

A lot of people will probably nominate turkey, but my vote goes to shortbread. And why were punches invented?

Noisy restaurants are perfect for people who have nothing to say to each other. Or just nothing to say.

Wherever it is, and that's not final yet, it will be in the company of people whose company I enjoy.

The Washington Post has rounded up some of the world's most exotic food festivals, including Iceland's Thorrablot Festival, where diners are served ram's testicles, rotted shark meat and other delicacies, washed down with a vile sounding alcoholic concoction called "Black Death." Bonus: it's in February. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/trav...foodfest14.html

But the US is still a free country (in most states) I think the idea behind a ban on free drinks (and other similar restrictions) is to reduce the number of people who get loaded and do stupid and possibly fatal things, like drive cars. But even if governments allowed it in Canada, most bar owners are pretty careful these days. There have been a handful of court cases finding bars liable, at least in part, for serving liquor to people who later smash up cars, themselves and others.

Thanks for the information.

Suzanne, what kind of wok(s) do you have and what do you use them for?

People who are unhappy about Food Network are unhappy precisely because their ratings are high, I think. I caught about five minutes of Rachael Ray today, BTW, and have to say that she has dropped many of her "mannerisms" and is not half bad.

i had the balls to bust the balls of an irish bartender (at an irish bar) that didn't throw me a buy-back. now this was a place that i found myself in several times a week on a good week. the guy damned near threw a pint glass at my head. i took something away from that little exchange. This being Canada, it never comes up, because it's illegal for a bar (or a bartender) to give a customer a free drink, or I guess, for that matter, a heavy pour.

Wine.

Our kids both had advent calendars, with each day bringing a small piece of chocolate. It was a tough one for them to give up. Watching the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. My daughter can recite it line by line, with gestures. The singalong version of The Messiah. Long distance calls lasting a long time and involving a lot of people.

One of the more interesting studies compared children in east and west Germany. The researcher hypothesized that the incidence of allergies and asthma would be much higher in poorer, dirtier "less healthful" east Germany than in the "hygienic" west. The results showed exactly the reverse to be the case: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_07.html

Great piece Francis. I've always felt that crepes were an underappreciated part of the culinary landscape in most parts of the world. What about the crepe batter? Do the places in San Francisco use buckwheat flour as part of the mix? And what are the big sellers, savory or sweet?

Isn't this one of those books that is best err..."borrowed"?

I think it's time for a Nero drinkblog. How about it?

In the past 10 years, we've seen the rise of Food Network TV, plus a bunch of food or cooking related programs on other channels. My sense is that there has never been more intense interest in food, dining, food safety and nutrition, but I don't see much evidence that, aside from a few scattered examples of mostly large dailies, newspapers have kept up. What kind of a job does your local paper do of covering food?

I know you didn't mean that the way it came out.

What, you give handouts to those shiftless animals? They'll never be able to stand up on their own four feet, err, in the case of the fish, swim on its own. You're just encouraging generations of dependency.

PBS has a few good, straight up and down cooking programs. They don't have to worry about ratings too much.